Below is the beginning of an article from the LA Times that highlights the simple fact that organic food is by law GMO free in the US. So this begs the question, is GM labeling even necessary?

By Dan Glickman and Kathleen MerriganDecember 19, 2013

Many Americans would like to know more about what they eat, including whether the food they purchase contains genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. That desire has sparked ballot initiatives and bitter fights in states across the country. But what a lot of concerned consumers don’t realize is that there is already a way to ensure that the foods they purchase are free of GMOs.

During the Clinton administration, we were responsible for implementing the Organic Foods Production Act. One of the implementation decisions that had to be made about the law after its passage was whether GMOs could be used in organic food. After receiving nearly 300,000 public comments during the rule making process, we said no. This means that foods certified as organic are also GMO-free.

So why aren’t more consumers aware of this? Because producers of organic food are in effect banned from letting them know.

Personally, neither of us is opposed to the use of GMOs and believe they can address important food and agricultural needs. The public made clear, however, that it didn’t feel such organisms belonged in food with an “organic” label.

For more than a decade, organic farmers, ranchers and food processors have been subject to rigorous annual inspections to ensure they are in compliance with national organic standards. The scrutiny is carried out by agents accredited by a division of the Department of Agriculture. But responsibility for overseeing food labeling lies with another part of the USDA, along with the Food and Drug Administration, and they continue to reject petitions by organic food producers who want to label their products as “GMO-free” or “produced without use of GMOs.”

If you click on the link above, download it and read it, you are sure to discover a book that is truly a collection of reader-friendly sense among a burgeoning pool of nonsense. Penned by a bevy of different authors, most of whom are scientists but including a few regular folks such as yours truly, the book presents many points of view, all of which are rational and pro-science. This collection is a service to humanity and costs you nothing but a few minutes of download time.

No hype. No sensationalism. No propaganda. Just the facts as observed, known or experienced by the writers. Fourat has done us a favor by making this collection available from one source. Download it today. You can print it and put it in the stocking of that pesky anti-GMO cousin who annoys you with talk of Vendana Shiva and Jeffrey Smith. Have the information at the ready on your smart phone. You’ll be armed with good information when and if the “GMO” word arises at any of the coming seasonal gatherings.

Fourat will always be a beacon for me personally because as a former anti-GMO blogger, it was his excellent blog, Random Rationality, his Q & A with Dr. Kevin Folta (also in the book), that first presented me with the agonizing question of could I be wrong about GMOs? I can’t pinpoint exactly when my come to Jesus moment arrived, only that I was never the same after I read that article [1].

Fourat Janabi

Something very fundamental inside me shifted and it affected more than just my view of GMOs. I was heading down the path of not trusting, even being fearful of western medicine and its pharmaceuticals, of all industrial food, largely based on what I was reading from Mercola, Dr. Oz, Health Ranger and similar people. I was beginning to spend fifty bucks a month on nutrition supplements. I’m not trying to be overly self-indulgent here, but I was really believing a load of crap. The pharmaceutical and food industries are not perfect, of course, but they are not out to kill us either.

My blog, Sleuth4Health, is an honest testament to how a person can change. Fourat Janabi’s collection of articles and essays may just make a few others question themselves as well.

Happy Holidays!

Julee K/Sleuth4Health

email: sleuth4health@gmail.com

[1] Read Science Is Laughing At Us, the first article on my blog after I began to realize I was wrong about GMOs and also included in Fourat’s collection.

I recently came across this opinion piece by beekeeper and independent research scientist Randy Oliver. His opinion is well founded and I enjoyed the article. He basically says not so fast on the widespread blame of the neonics as the main cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. Were it only that simple! Interestingly enough, he also says that honeybees are not on the brink of extinction, that bee colony numbers are actually on the rise, but that keeping them alive is becoming more difficult.

Here is a brief excerpt from Oliver’s article followed by a link to the original. I highly recommend this piece!

Beekeeper, biologist, indepenent researcher

I’m also a lifelong environmentalist and organic gardener, coming of age at the time Silent Spring was published. So when bee colonies — including my own — started to die at an increased rate in the winter of 2004-5, roughly coinciding with the introduction of the neonicotinoid insecticides, the claim that they were killing off the bees resonated with me. But my scientific training called for me to actually check the facts of the situation.

The first inconvenient truth is that honey bees are not going extinct — colony numbers are actually increasing in both the U.S. and around the world. But it is tougher to keep them alive these days, even in the absence of pesticide exposure, due to novel parasites and declining forage.

Even from the outside looking in, if you hang around the dubious controversy over GMOs long enough, you see things come full circle time and again – the most recent iteration being the retraction by the Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal of the now infamous tumorous rat study by Giles Seralini, first published in November, 2012.

This study was released right around the time I was in full swing as an anti-GMO spreader of nonsense. I was two months into it, fresh from Genetic Roulette and a dozen Ronnie Cummins articles. Heck I even gave Organic Consumers Association $50. Oh yes the rats got to me. Oh yes they did. How could they not? The iconic image became the poster child for the anti-GMO movement.

The world was ruled by greedy corporate bastards who were poisoning the people who didn’t know better. As for the people who did, well they were all under gag orders, and the ones who dared to speak up, Seralini being one, well, they were immediately disgraced by the science community, all in the name of money.

It’s all so easy to believe when one doesn’t know any better. GMOs are the great scapegoat of the new millenium – at the root of the following:

♦ some or most of the common diseases of our modern day society [1].

♦ the great paying off, worldwide, of every government agency employee, every plant university researcher in the crop and plant science field, every journalist or blogger who considers science before regurgitating unsubstantiated claims that scare the wits out of the unsuspecting. (Apparently Monsanto, DuPont and other major biotech companies really must control the universe because otherwise, how could they keep these tens of millions of folks on payroll and see to it they only publish/write about/vote or lobby for what is approved by said corporations?)

♦ the great silencing and intimidation of the ‘real’ plant scientists, the ones who publish singular papers in pay-to-publish journals, papers showing the horrific dangers of GMOs, papers with no follow-ups and often little or no data, papers that the tens of thousands of ‘shill’ scientists all around the world discredit.

♦ a massive corporate conspiracy to put a former or current biotech industry luminary in key government and agency positions everywhere in the world

P U H – L E E E Z !

As I wrote the above bullet points, I realized that if I didn’t know them to be true, they’d be ideal fodder for an article in an outlandish tabloid, appearing under an article that pictures a boy sheepishly grinning at his teacher – headline: “An Alien Ate My Homework.”

I am on this tirade today because when I saw those unfortunate rats one year ago, I was deeply affected by the image [2]. It is one of those anti-GMO memes that etches itself in the minds of people and informs all thoughts afterwards. Even if the study goes completely up in flames, which it looks like it is in the process of doing, the damage has already been done.

If Seralini’s study has any validity to it, this is what I would like to see happen. Do it again. Repeat the study but do it right this time. Make it beyond reproach by your science brethren. Instead of whining and screaming ‘foul’ to your lawyers, get some real data and show the world.

As an outsider looking in, one thing I have observed over and over again is that good, credible, cutting edge science draws a crowd. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a study with such monumental implications? Seralini should have molecular geneticists, crop scientists and plant biologists from far and wide breaking down his door to get in on this.

We’ll see.

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Addendum: I am not so naive as to think this ‘study’ will go away. Troops will rally around their fallen comrade and preach ever so much more fervently. The conspiracy theory, the Monsanto white-washing of science, blah blah blah – all will explode among activists but this nugget of truth will still shine like a beacon.

[2] I feel I must be fair, fess up, and say that even when I first saw the Seralini study and its disturbing images, I was one part skeptical, albeit a small part. Obviously I must have been skeptical all along when I was anti-GMO or I never could have changed my biotechnology tune so abruptly as I did last April. I do remember thinking, well if GM corn is doing this to rats, why aren’t we all walking around with bulbous growths sticking out of our necks? That was one of MANY issues I had with the movement. See my last post, Interview with Green State TV.